Eastern perspectives of western discourses of the East

Abstract

In accepting that part of its raison d'etre is the advocacy of inter-civilizational dialogue, IKON will be able to offer the kind of discourse that moves away both from the divisiveness of much global political discourse as well as from the self-conceit of being situated in the East as the repository of ancient wisdom. As conscious subjects of that discourse, the challenge before IKON is what are we to make of the boundary notions of East and West as the objects of that same discourse? This study thus aims at a transdisciplinary approach to explore, identify, and present Eastern perspectives of western discourses of the East. It intends to show how the East (as located in Malaysia) perceives of the ways in which the West presents or represents, and reproduces or reconfigures, the material and transcendental influences of the East, in the form of civilizational impacts and as forms of contemporary culture, in discursive constructions/discourses of the East. It contends that the ways in which West imbibes and partakes of these material and cultural influences of the East reflects and represents Western attitudes towards the East as exemplified in the 'gaze of the West. This is to culminate in a publication entitled The gaze of the West: Under Scrutiny by the East. A symposium entitled Under Scrutiny: How the West reframed the East will be organized to obtain chapters of perspectives of particular practices as evidence of the praxis of Easternization in relevant spheres of human life and experience.